Athletes call it the zone; that feeling where time slows down and your brain goes into laser focus.

If you’re of an engineering mindset, or like immediate feedback, it’s too hard to guage that flow state in a training program.

But if you can find a way to tick this list off, one-by-one, you may well find yourself in the flow more often when you train.

How to Find the Flow in your Training Program

There are so many levers to pull to make a training program work. It’s kind of a big deal to get this right.

Learn to make your own benchmark; follow this list and find your flow.

One of my Linked-In groups was asked the question – What helped you become a great trainer. I thought this group wisdom would be great to share, and offer some of the advice and Training Tips that were given.

• Get people out of their seats and actively involved

• Understand that learning is created by the learner

• Constantly ask open-ended questions to check for understanding  

• Find out where the content fits the audience outside of the training and focus on that constantly

• Every chance you get, train and co-facilitate with folks better then you.

• Get people talking about their experiences and build from that – they’re adult learners, they do know stuff

• Talk in story and metaphor and analogy – don’t lecture for too long.

• Having a feeling of gratitude and discovery for each new learning group will bring something special to you, and, more importantly, the group

• Maintain a personal notebook, give yourself an evaluation form at the end of every training – go over your training session critiquing everything.

• Always be looking to learn new things, you might get to a level of unconscious competence, but you need to keep growing to maintain that edge.

• Know your material, know your material, know your material

• Have a back up plan if you are using any technology

• Be ready and willing to go off script

• Listen like your life depends on it

Any ideas of your own to add?. What advice would you give new trainers starting out?